Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” was first published in the film journal Screen (vol.16, no.3) in 1975 and is canonical in film and visual studies. It is genuinely shocking to think no one has written a counterpoint argument to articulate what the Female Gaze might include. Perhaps fear of essentializing male and female ontologies prevented such a project.

There is definitely some essentializing going on in Soloway’s talk. Nevertheless, I’m posting it here because it offers a lot to consider and certain excerpts could be a great teaching tool to help students think about how nearly all mainstream cinema forces the viewer to either take up the male gaze or not enjoy the movie.